Retractors and/or cannulas may be used to provide a surgeon with an access portal to a surgical site in a patient's body. Various minimally invasive procedures, including spinal procedures such as decompression, fusion, external fixation, and the like may be performed through such access portals.
The retractors and/or cannulas typically used in these procedures must often be secured in position within a surgical site via external devices mounted to the operating table, for example via an adjustable arm coupled to a table mounted retractor frame. The setup, deployment, positioning, and repositioning of these devices before and during surgery can be awkward and time-consuming. Furthermore, the arms, frames, and other components associated with these table mounted retraction devices typically crowd the area around the surgical site, thereby reducing the space a surgeon has in which to operate, limiting the flexibility the surgeon has in his choice of instrumentation and/or hardware to accomplish a procedure, and impeding intra-operative imaging.